tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post7470224979878024847..comments2015-07-29T18:48:51.150-05:00Comments on The Blog of Helios: When "Free" Can Suck.Ken Starkshttps://plus.google.com/113994304818499540486noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-89654477756674134492014-09-26T14:35:36.981-05:002014-09-26T14:35:36.981-05:00Like Sum Yung Gai said, HTML 5 is the new std. You...Like Sum Yung Gai said, HTML 5 is the new std. Youtube is now in html 5 if you don&#39;t have flash (at least a chunk of it is). https://www.youtube.com/html5 It has worked for me. Google video creation tools probably use html5. And html5 can do a lot more than what most videos are: a repeat of picture frames with an ounce of interactivity. The actual controls (stop start etc) were coded by google into html5 probably long ago.Jose_Xnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-87518986145493707282014-09-07T00:54:53.476-05:002014-09-07T00:54:53.476-05:00I think it should be mentioned that the Java suppo...I think it should be mentioned that the Java support issue in Chrome had more to do with Oracle than Google. The Java licensing issues created by Oracle are quickly becoming a nightmare. They haven&#39;t gone after OpenJava yet but I&#39;m fairly certain that&#39;s only because they are looking at the legal options. Google won the lawsuit over the version of Java they use in Android for apps, but Oracle no longer allows anyone to distribute their version of Java with any OS which is why all Linux ditros no longer include and use OpenJava instead.<br /><br />Honestly Java is a security nightmare. There are better tools for building and running online programs that are for more open.Shaun Marolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14202236588030415716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-53281751410876775292014-07-22T08:19:04.233-05:002014-07-22T08:19:04.233-05:00Hey, Ken,
Even Stallman says that it is okay to c...Hey, Ken,<br /><br />Even Stallman says that it is okay to charge for programs as you are supporting the programmer.<br /><br />jdsJim Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390158789613075293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-19702941541292617442014-07-16T08:02:42.942-05:002014-07-16T08:02:42.942-05:00I&#39;m still using version 34.something so Java s...I&#39;m still using version 34.something so Java still works. Recently, Firefox did exactly that: as soon as the installed version was known to be vulnerable, the plugin was disabled automatically. I was then &quot;forced&quot; to update from Oracle, since they had the great idea of not letting distributions automatically provide updates for it. Being security conscious, I actually support how FF works -- and like other people, I adopt a pragmatic view of using certain proprietary things until free ones are ready. Considering the recent Oracle versus Google bickering, isn&#39;t the current situation a somewhat unavoidable consequence of a deranged system? Maybe Google should use an approach similar to FF and allow the &quot;unblocking&quot; of the plugin. In my case, not having that option will mean no more banking with Chrome. Alas, Chromium is not that light. I have machines with 2GB RAM and FF starts faster, though Chromium is somewhat more fluid for -- ironically -- Flash content... though I like Google, FF seems to me a safer bet regarding Freedom in the long term. Maybe it&#39;s time to check other new browsers regarding that acid test...<br />This situation is akin to the Nvidia one, with proprietary drives being better... and look what Linus had to do. My opinion is that, unless we have specific reasons to do it, we should choose Freedom over speed or features. That&#39;s why I currently avoid Nvidia, use Chromium only as backup and even want to trade my Android phone for a Firefox OS or Ubuntu Touch asap.<br /><br />Alger NonymousAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-53316943397153881412014-07-15T19:39:52.741-05:002014-07-15T19:39:52.741-05:00link - http://www.palemoon.org/
Pale Moon is a re...link - http://www.palemoon.org/<br /><br />Pale Moon is a re-spin of the firefox browser. I switched to it after the fiasco that was FF29/30. Not looking back... May this avenue might be suitable for you?Scott Furryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18214277486942107008noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-33555108686596342902014-07-15T16:53:20.347-05:002014-07-15T16:53:20.347-05:00Many years ago, in a private discussion with Theo ...Many years ago, in a private discussion with Theo DeRaadt, he said something to me that would ultimately change my view on Free Software. To paraphrase - &quot;Ultimately, user freedom will be won or lost at the standard level, and not at the code level.&quot;<br /><br />At the time, I was a Freetard, and my pet project was pulling out the non-free components in Xorg for gNewSense. And then shaking my fist angrily at Debian for not doing the same 4 years ago (at the time).<br /><br />Today, I have Ubuntu on my systems, and I&#39;m currently browsing the the out of date, proprietary Flash plugin from Adobe? Why? Because I like laughing at Flash videos.<br /><br />Ultimately, computers are tools and should work for users. If that computer owner&#39;s defition of &quot;work&quot; is &quot;play Flash videos&quot; then installing Flash should be easy for that user.<br /><br />The battle for user freedom won&#39;t happen by yelling at users about installing Flash. It will be won by creating alternative video sharing sites that aren&#39;t locked into proprietary technology so that they&#39;ll never have to install Flash to see their videos. It will be won by leveraging open standards in the browser to replace things that are currently easily snipped from the web, but require Java.<br /><br />In the meantime, run what works for you. That&#39;s freedom, ain&#39;t it?K. Darien Freehearthttp://freeheart.menoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-72301884243140854852014-07-15T16:42:04.022-05:002014-07-15T16:42:04.022-05:00To those who refuse to pay money to a Linux distro...To those who refuse to pay money to a Linux distro developer I would only ask them to open their eyes.<br /><br />Does RedHat contribute to general Linux development? A visit to lwn.net&#39;s regular feature showing who is contributing the most patchsets AND the most lines of code usually has Redhat at or near the top. They maintain GCC. They, love or hate it, drive Gnome development even though they currently derive little income from desktop/workstation sales. They are driving the (insane IMHO) drive to systemd, they push a lot of large install, cloud and cluster work. All of it under 100% RMS pure licenses.<br /><br />Ubuntu is more mixed in their contributions but then they are a lot SMALLER.<br /><br />Bottom line, buying from a distro IS funding Free Software development. Ok, you might get a little more bang for your buck buying manuals from the FSF or just donating, but on the other hand, RH does actually provide direct services in exchange for your cash. And on the gripping hand, donating a few bux to Debian can never be a bad idea since even RedHat ends up with code developed there, although not as fast as it ends up in Ubuntu. <br /><br />Everybody is scratching their own itches and so long as the code is Free Software it is all good for everybody. So less griping and moaning about somebody doing business with somebody you aren&#39;t.<br /><br />As to Chrome, reality check time. Chromium is an open source browser, Chrome is 100% closed. It IS commercial software. But Google being Google they give it away like all their other products because it is tied to the Googlesphere.John Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13484693345917448845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-76792609540176577432014-07-15T13:36:35.165-05:002014-07-15T13:36:35.165-05:00Hi Ken... about the discussion with the guy you me...Hi Ken... about the discussion with the guy you mentioned... &quot;...it should never have proprietary drivers and apps within...&quot;, I believe he, and many people do, is mistaking what being FOSS means!.<br />What makes a Linux Distro FOSS is not the fact that comes or not with 3rd party proprietary code or not, is the fact that you have the freedom to remove that code from the system if you want!<br />The magical word is OPEN!... no matter if it&#39;s free or not, full of 3rd party apps or not, that magical word is the key to enter the system and do as you please!... : )Raphael Sancheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02403206295760215325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-5968712365770321012014-07-15T12:07:34.238-05:002014-07-15T12:07:34.238-05:00The problem isn&#39;t Firefox. Rather, the proble...The problem isn&#39;t Firefox. Rather, the problem is the dependence that so many (poorly written) apps have on proprietary plugins like Sun/Oracle Java and Adobe Flash. I don&#39;t see the need for this proprietary &quot;Pepper&quot; thingy that Google and Adobe seem to like. Had we the source code to Adobe Flash, and if people would program Java to the Classpath standards instead of Oracle-specific features, we&#39;d be OK. But we don&#39;t, and they don&#39;t, so we&#39;re in this situation.<br /><br />OK, great, we know the problem. The long-term fix is to move to HTML5 standards and non-patent-encumbered formats. <br /><br />Now, what do we do about it in the *short* term, i. e. today?<br /><br />I would say, you&#39;re doing the right thing by going back to Firefox. On my Ubuntu system, both Flash and Java work with Firefox (they&#39;re just an &quot;apt-get&quot; away). Things work, people are happy with their systems, and life is good.<br /><br />--SYGSum Yung Gainoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-28888216211891218292014-07-15T11:28:59.024-05:002014-07-15T11:28:59.024-05:00Good post, Ken. If I had a dollar for every time I...Good post, Ken. If I had a dollar for every time I&#39;ve crossed swords with Free Software &quot;purists&quot; over usability, I&#39;d be a rich man. The point, well made, is that we need things like Flash and Java until things like Gnash and IcedTea become viable alternatives, and it shouldn&#39;t even have to be discussed.Larry the Open Source Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14312742357901465693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-72284126354571845932014-07-15T10:03:56.252-05:002014-07-15T10:03:56.252-05:00One correction and a couple of additions to my pre...One correction and a couple of additions to my previous post:<br /><br />The version of Flash that we are left with as an NPAPI Linux plugin is 11.2.x not 12.x.<br /><br />I have looked further into this issue and discovered Mozilla&#39;s plan to deal with this issue.<br /><br />Mozilla don&#39;t want to support Pepper because it yet another alternate implementation of features that they feel should be (and to a great extent are) available as HTML standards. Mozilla already support a legacy implementation, NPAPI, and they want any transition to be straight to HTML standards.<br /><br />In the spirit of this, they are developing their own Flash Player as part of Firefox, called Shumway. I had heard of Shumway, but was not aware of its exact purpose. It is Mozilla&#39;s plan to have Shumway working well by the time support for Flash 11.2.x ends. Until then, they don&#39;t expect there to be much content that won&#39;t work reasonably well with Flash 11.2.x.<br /><br />I have also discovered that there is an NPAPI wrapper for the Pepper Flash plugin which works, with some issues still, called Fresh Player Plugin.<br /><br />Another possible solution to a requirement for a newer version of Flash that I was familiar with already is to use Pipelight to run Windows NPAPI plugins under Linux. I sometimes use Piplelight to run Microsoft&#39;s Silverlight plugin on Linux.CFWhitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01109952971346462453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-36586057168810402312014-07-15T09:07:46.641-05:002014-07-15T09:07:46.641-05:00Chrome has not dispensed with Flash. The same Fla...Chrome has not dispensed with Flash. The same Flash player that has been included with Chrome for quite some time is still there. What Chrome has dispensed with is the NPAPI protocol. That is, they&#39;ve stopped supporting Netscape plugins in favor of Pepper plugins only (they were supporting both).<br /><br />The reason Java is gone is because at this point there is no PPAPI Java plugin. The Java plugin was never a part of Chrome anyway. Chrome just used the same Java plugin that Firefox uses. In order for Java support for Chrome (or Chromium) to be restored, a Pepper plugin version of Java will have to be released (or NPAPI support will have to be restore, or perhaps, an add-on could be developed).<br /><br />Now we are stuck in the disagreeable situation where in order to get an up to date version of Flash (14.x), we need to use a browser that supports Pepper, like Chrome or Chromium, but to get Java we need a browser that supports Netscape, which Chrome and Chromium no longer do.<br /><br />It might be useful if Firefox would start to support Pepper (though we would still have to download the Pepper Flash plugin from Google, since they develop it). I don&#39;t see Google readily restoring NPAPI support. Until then we can use Firefox and get Flash version 12.x. Of course, a PPAPI version of Java may be released, but I don&#39;t want to have to use Chrome or Chromium anyway. I prefer to use a Mozilla based browser most of the time.CFWhitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01109952971346462453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-66077119263016513232014-07-15T01:01:42.010-05:002014-07-15T01:01:42.010-05:00Greetings from an ex-Libranet user from South Fran...Greetings from an ex-Libranet user from South France. I&#39;ve been using this great distro back in 2003 and 2004, and even wrote a review for the french paper magazine Linux Pratique. <br /><br />Currently a significant part of my job is migrating desktops from Windows to Linux. My clients really don&#39;t care what&#39;s under the hood. What they do care about is that everything JustWorks(tm) and that they have a functional desktop with one nicely integrated application per task. Until recently I&#39;ve developed my own Slackware-based desktop with loads of extra packages such as codecs, fonts, extra applications, etc. More recently I&#39;m using a heavily modded Elementary OS, and on older PC&#39;s, I go for a mix of minimal Ubuntu (installed with the Server CD) and the MATE desktop on top of it. I&#39;m relying on Firefox for web browsing. No Chrome here. Everything works fine. Niki Kovacshttp://www.microlinux.frnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-10326239756959016272014-07-14T15:14:01.408-05:002014-07-14T15:14:01.408-05:00Trying to say that charging for a service is wrong...Trying to say that charging for a service is wrong is absurd. There is no gun to his head to pay for what he does not want, unlike the state.<br /><br />Voluntary interactions often include trade of value for value. To bemoan that is to be completely blind to what &quot;voluntary&quot; means.<br /><br />Don&#39;t like it? Don&#39;t do it. Move on, nothing to see here.Bob Robertsonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33801994.post-87320989855121858772014-07-13T23:36:47.399-05:002014-07-13T23:36:47.399-05:00Hi Ken
Have a look at this browser based on Open ...Hi Ken <br />Have a look at this browser based on Open Source Chromium browser<br />http://www.maxthon.com/blog/tag/linux-browser/<br /><br />Note particularly down the page a bit for the comments on flash support. I have been using Maxthon for a couple of months now.<br />Vern [Christchurch NZ]Verdia13http://www.blogger.com/profile/17390661303385764804noreply@blogger.com